יש לי וידוי

 יש לי וידוי: עזרתי לילדים בבגרויות. כשהייתי סטודנטית בבאר שבע הייתי משגיחה בבגרויות בבית ספר. אחלה השלמת הכנסה כי מקבלים שכר שעתי ולא עושים הרבה, אלא שזה שכר מינימום (ברמה של האגורה אפילו בלי לעגל למעלה) ובתכלס זה הרבה עבודה כי הילדים לא יושבים בשקט וכותבים תשובות... וכן, היו מקרים שעזרתי להם. ישבו שם ילדים שלא היה להם מושג בחומר. אחת המורות אפילו אמרה לי, "תקשיבי, זה ילדים שלא יעברו את המבחן."

פעם זאת היתה בגרות באנגלית אקסטרני, יעני הבנות שישבו לי בכיתה כבר סיימו תיכון בלי בגרות וחזרו כדי להשלים דרישות מינימליות ולקבל תעודת בגרות. אם הן לא עוברות את המבחן עכשיו אין להן עתיד. אז עזרתי. השתדלתי לא לתת תשובות ממש, אבל כן נתתי רמזים עבים. ואני גאה בזה. אני ממש מקווה שהם עברו.

Japanese Cars

You know how sometimes you feel like you just need to add nuance to a conversation? Like the people in the conversation are just missing something important? Well here's one.

Israel respects German engineering. In fact when I worked in the automotive industry we would talk about German car companies in awe. We also use German words in construction because it was German immigrants who influenced Israeli construction. At the same time, there are Israelis who refuse to visit Germany (or even Poland or other European countries) because of what they did to us in the holocaust. When my friend bought her first car she was debating over whether or not she wanted a Volkswagen, and decided to get one because it's considered a safe car and her sweet revenge against the Germans would be if their car ended up saving a Jewish life.

My grandfather, a US Marine in WWII, never bought a Japanese car.

Darndest things

I just love when my kids say really smart things without realizing it! Like today I asked Lavi why he took the band aid off his scar - he's supposed to keep it covered because sunlight can make the scar visible (and naturally we'd like it to disappear). And in response he shrugged and said, "I don't care how I look, I look like I look."

לא משנה, אני נראה איך שאני נראה!

He's absolutely right. I hope he can keep this attitude as he gets older.

I see that my last post was questioning a parenting fail, but I think this could be a parenting win.

Ok is this a parenting fail?

 I might have messed up this parenting thing... Hear me out? My son (6 years old) recently asked me if boys can become girls or girls can become boys. I'm not sure where the question came from (he said his friend told him it was possible, maybe?)

Of course part of me wanted to say no, but I also wanted to add that trans people exist. So I said that it doesn't just happen, but if a man really wants to become a woman he can have an operation. An operation where the doctor can remove male genitals.

Anyway fast forward to today, we're talking about how my son needs to have a mole removed and this involves an operation. And suddenly my three year old girl says "he's going to become a girl, they'll remove his p*nis!" 

Basically we said "operation," and she had heard that there's an operation where boys can become girls (either she overheard me, or my son told her), and she figured that that's what was happening.

Jeez, all I wanted was to answer their questions honestly. Now my daughter is going to be telling her friends that her brother is transitioning?? Omg lord help.

Family of survivors?

It's always been a little weird to me that I come from an Ashkenazi background but don't actually have any Holocaust survivors in the family. They all left Eastern Europe before the war. Zaidy's family immigrated from Hungary to the US through Ellis Island in 1921, Bubby's family from Poland to Canada also in the 20's, and Saba's father came to Vancouver even earlier, at the very beginning of the 20th century. Only Safta's family was still in Europe. She was born in Berlin in 1933 but in 1936 her mother moved with her to England (her father worked in Poland so he would travel back and forth). In 1944 Safta and her mother joined her father in Vancouver after he had made his way there through Japan.

Safta says she doesn't remember much of the war, just that during the London blitz the kids would go out and collect pieces of shrapnel. That always sounded quite dangerous and strange to me, but here I am eighty years later picking up Iranian aluminum off the streets of Givot Eden, so hey.

Iran

So I'm just now in a zoom meeting with an Israeli fighter pilot and a man who's an Iran expert, and let me tell you this is fascinating.

The pilot described his experience a little, which is truly insane. He literally flew over Iran and watched missiles being launched - he says that from the air you don't actually know whether those are anti-aircraft missiles aiming at you, or ballistic missiles being launched at Israel or any of the gulf countries. And the planes were definitely targeted with AA missiles. He also said that Iran looks beautiful from the air and that if we ever have a peace agreement he'd love to go visit.

The Iran expert then explained the goals of the war as he sees them. He says it's about disabling Iran's capabilities for long range missiles, and of course nuclear warheads - basically the things that are an actual threat to Israel. He doesn't think the war is going to take down the IRGC, and he doesn't even think that's the goal, which I thought was interesting. As in, of course getting rid of the Islamic Regime would stop the motivation for such weapons, but the regime can be stopped even if it doesn't collapse. He also explained how this outcome can be reached militarily or through diplomatic negotiations (although he doesn't trust the American diplomacy to actually get us there).

The last important note was that Israel needs to make sure that Hizballah isn't included in any sort of ceasefire deal with Iran. Hizballah is a threat to Israel regardless, and we can't expect the USA to take care of them for us. Also, if the war does resume after this short ceasefire, Israel needs to put most of its resources towards Lebanon (like literally send fewer missions to Iran and more to Lebanon). And the current diplomatic talks with Lebanon are a good thing that might actually lead to peace.

Of course, since this was a Q4 zoom, Yoav Heller started the talk with his own little 'motivational' speech. He said some things that are obvious to me but maybe not to everyone? 

1. We're still fighting the war that started on Oct 7th, 2023. It's about the existence of Israel as a sovereign state.

2. We Israelis need to stay focused on the north. This is obvious to me because Yossi has spent most of the war up north so I'm very aware of what's happening with Hizballah.

"Casualties"

You know what's interesting? Looking at the numbers of people who were killed and trying to make sense of it. Ok actually I'm here to argue that it's not that interesting. I see foreigners claim that Israel is horrible because of the number of people who were killed in Lebanon or Iran or Gaza, which is much much higher than the number of people killed in Israel. I see Israelis tie themselves up in knots trying to explain the difference.

And yeah, it's crazy that so few Israelis have been killed, but that's the wrong number to look at. At this point in the current war with Iran I think seventeen Israelis have died and about 3500 have been injured. Now that's a wild statistic to look at. The question that needs to be asked is, what factors determine the number of casualties?

Let's talk about car accidents for a minute. I have a friend who used to work for the national authority for road safety here in Israel and she told me a little about how they do statistics there. Her point was that when you're looking at severity of car accidents you have to look at injuries the same way you look at death, because some horrible accidents leave people severely injured for the rest of their lives, but they could have died. Sometimes the difference between life and death has nothing to do with the severity of the accident - maybe it's the medical care, speed of ambulance arrival, or just the exact angle that the passenger hit the windshield. It could be the make of the car or the age of the victim. And of course the same accident would have more casualties if there were more people in the car besides the driver.

Back to war, I think the point is clear. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Looking for a Good Word for This

 You know "mansplaining," right? When a man tells a woman how she should feel or react to a situation she's going through that he's never experienced? Like periods or childbirth or abortion. It's an excellent word in my opinion, but it needs to be expanded. First of all because it's not only men, and it's not only related to sexual health. Second, because I can think of at least two other situations where such "splaining" happens to me and has nothing to do with gender.

So help me come up with a word? Here's where I need it:

1. Parenting. You know how many non-parents can tell you how to behave with your child?? I even used to do it before I had kids - judge parents and think I knew better, just because I read something in Readers Digest once. It can even be other parents telling you how to parent your child, just because *their* child acts a certain way. Man, I was such a good parent before I had kids.

Anyway "parent-splaining" is terrible, help!

2. Living in the Middle East. So many well-meaning westerners can tell me all about war, like which acts of war are moral or legal. Let me just say this - if you're talking about war with the language of moral philosophy, you're definitely privileged to never have experienced it. Someone called it "west-splaining" but that's a terrible word too, it just doesn't roll off the tongue at all.

Find me a better word.

Thank you.